The mission of the NWSA Youth Program is to provide educational outreach opportunities and scholarships to young equestrians in the Northwest who want to compete regionally and nationally in addition to expanding their knowledge about the history, development, care and feeding of American Saddlebred Horses in an environment where leadership skills, teamwork, friendships and good sportsmanship prevail.

Message from Youth President

Welcome to the Northwest Saddlebred Association Youth Group! My name is Grace Perkins, and I will be your new Youth President for 2016. I am 15 years old and ride at Kardia Equestrian Academy. I show my American Saddlebred gelding, River City Tune throughout the NWSA’s Silver Circuit Shows in the Park Open division. I am so excited for this show season, and I’m very grateful for the great maintenance and growth of our Youth Group by Stella Frechette and Katie May! This season I would really love to see growth in spectators at all our shows, as well as some new fundraisers, and also want to add some more youth activities to bring us all together. I hope we can get more of our older and younger youth involved in activities. Fundraising is a struggle we face every year, but it doesn’t have to be. This year I want to add a few more events to C-Fair, Fall Classic, and maybe a few other shows. At C-Fair, Sydney Coover (Youth Vice President) and I are going to try to arrange for a dunk tank. We will use this as a fundraiser and charge people a small fee to soak their barn mates, trainers, parents, or who ever they please. I think this event would be even more successful if some trainers volunteered ahead of time to attract spectators. Another idea is that we could make some calendars or pamphlets cataloging pictures of our youth. These could be sold at shows or by us personally. We could maybe make this into a contest of who can sell the most and have small prizes and bragging rights. At all of our shows, I see so many youth that aren’t involved in our activities. So, I would like to make sure everyone knows what’s going on. Maybe having some kids go barn to barn and hand out fliers, and i will also be posting updates on the youth groups Instagram (@nwsayouth) and FaceBook Pages (in progress). The last area I would like to improve is the lack of older youth in our program. I see a lot of 14-17 Junior Exhibitors that either don’t know about us or are completely uninterested. I would like to try to make it more appealing by maybe having a couple events for just the older girls. If we could get more of the older youth involved we could do a Big\Little Sister type of program and we could help\mentor each other by matching an older girl with a younger one. Just some ideas! I’m so excited for show season and can’t wait to see everyone together! Let me know if you have anymore ideas!
Grace Perkins, President NWSA Youth Group Welcome to the Northwest Saddlebred Association Youth Group! My name is Grace Perkins, and I will be your new Youth President for 2016. I am 15 years old and ride at Kardia Equestrian Academy. I show my American Saddlebred gelding, River City Tune throughout the NWSA’s Silver Circuit Shows in the Park Open division. I am so excited for this show season, and I’m very grateful for the great maintenance and growth of our Youth Group by Stella Frechette and Katie May! This season I would really love to see growth in spectators at all our shows, as well as some new fundraisers, and also want to add some more youth activities to bring us all together. I hope we can get more of our older and younger youth involved in activities. Fundraising is a struggle we face every year, but it doesn’t have to be. This year I want to add a few more events to C-Fair, Fall Classic, and maybe a few other shows. At C-Fair, Sydney Coover (Youth Vice President) and I are going to try to arrange for a dunk tank. We will use this as a fundraiser and charge people a small fee to soak their barn mates, trainers, parents, or who ever they please. I think this event would be even more successful if some trainers volunteered ahead of time to attract spectators. Another idea is that we could make some calendars or
pamphlets cataloging pictures of our youth. These could be sold at shows or by us personally. We could maybe make this into a contest of who can sell the most and have small prizes and bragging rights. At all of our shows, I see so many youth that aren’t involved in our activities. So, I would like to make sure everyone knows what’s going on. Maybe having some kids go barn to barn and hand out fliers, and i will also be posting updates on the youth groups Instagram (@nwsayouth) and FaceBook Pages (in progress). The last area I would like to improve is the lack of older youth in our program. I see a lot of 14-17 Junior Exhibitors that either don’t know about us or are completely uninterested. I would like to try to make it more appealing by maybe having a couple events for just the older girls. If we could get more of the older youth involved we could do a Big\Little Sister type of program and we could help\mentor each other by matching an older girl with a younger one. Just some ideas! I’m so excited for show season and can’t wait to see everyone together! Let me know if you have anymore ideas!
Grace Perkins, President NWSA Youth Group